“This is our misfortune: we are giving birth to a society where courage has come to be understood as being a bully, and the nobility of character is seen as cowardice. Today, a blood-dripping gandasa has become the icon of our culture and civilisation, instead of the reed […]

On January 6, 1968, the government of President Ayub Khan announced that a conspiracy had been uncovered between some personnel from East Pakistan and Indian politicians to overthrow the government in East Pakistan and establish an independent state of Bangladesh. Twelve days later, the popular Bengali politician Sheikh Mujibur Rehman was […]

This article was originally published in Dawn Images, March 14, 2010. In presenting it here, I am making two changes to correct a factucal error. The third sentence in the original text was, “Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the dissident foreign minister who was generally identified with a hard line stance against India, had just received an […]

This article was first published in Dawn Tuesday Review, 20-26 August, 1996

Afternoon, March 16, 1966. Naz Cinema, Karachi. The scene opens on a night club. The atmosphere is lively with a band, drums and the guitar. Young couples are shown taking to the floor, gyrating to the Western music. The camera tilts right to show […]

This article was originally published in Dawn, Tuesday Review, October 31 – November 6, 1995, with the highlight that “This is the second of a five-article series on the subcontinent’s cinematic culture. The third article on the function of film songs follows next.” Other three articles in the series were ‘The rise and fall of […]